Lorain County farmers speak out

2018 Farm Bill topic of roundtable discussion

Lorain County farmers and agricultural industry stakeholders laid out their needs as the U.S. Senate looks to pass farm legislation in 2018.

On Feb. 23, representatives from the office of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, convened a roundtable discussion at the Lorain County Farm Bureau at 530 S. Main St. in Oberlin to discuss their priorities in the 2018 Farm Bill.

Brown is the first Ohioan to serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee in more than 40 years and is helping write the 2018 Farm Bill, according to a news release.

“The next Farm Bill is an opportunity to help Ohio farmers respond to tough conditions and support rural communities across our state as they fight the opioid epidemic and fix outdated infrastructure,” Brown said. “I want this Farm Bill to reflect Ohio priorities. That’s what conversations like these are all about – hearing from Ohio farmers and communities to ensure we write the best bill for Ohio.”

Brown was represented by Jonathan McCracken and Ann Longsworth-Orr and presented

updates on the status of the bill and heard feedback directly from area stakeholders from Lorain, Erie and Cuyahoga counties.

McCracken advises Brown on agricultural policy and has been meeting with groups across Ohio, holding more than 20 roundtable discussions.

“We want to hear what’s working with the Farm Bill, what’s not working and how we can make this Farm Bill more reflective of the needs on the ground,” McCracken said.

Al DiVencenzo of Grafton is a District 3 trustee for the Ohio Farm Bureau Association representing members from Lorain, Erie, Cuyahoga and Huron counties. He emphasized providing new opportunities for younger farmers and to create programs to promote urban agriculture.

“We’ve got areas in Cuyahoga County that are vacant housing lots and a significant interest of people know where their food source is coming from and they’re looking to maybe become farmers,” DiVencenzo said.

DiVencenzo wants the next Farm Bill to incentivize programs for urban farming and wants to look at combing programs with small businesses through other agencies.

“It’s odd because you see that urban sprawl yet you look at our inner cities like Lorain and Cleveland and there is a lot of vacant land. What can we do with this vacant land,” DiVencenzo said.” There’s all sorts of creativity. We need

to have the education programs, we need the ability to secure that land and then we need the right to farm. I don’t want anybody dictating to me my ability to farm.”

McCracken stressed the challenge for the Farm Bill in regards to ideas on urban farming and using programs under the federal system that can both encourage risk and diversification for farmers, alluding to new crops to emerge like malted barley in central Ohio in the craft beer industry along with hops.

“If you can keep those dollars in Ohio that is good for those villages and counties,” he said.

McCracken added Brown is placing a priority on making improvements to crop insurance programs and wants to find ways to help smaller-scale farmers who are interested in local food production.

Other issues of concern to area stakeholders included water quality standards, rural farming assistance programs and programs aimed at prioritizing land for farming.

The Farm Bill expires in September and is typically renewed around every five years, with the last update coming in 2018. Brown’s goal is to get a bill passed through the Senate and signed by President Donald Trump before it expires in September.

The bill has had six hearings in the Senate up to this point on different aspects of the legislation and McCracken said Brown is hoping the legislation will be approved for consideration by the full Senate sometime in the spring following approval by the Senate Agriculture Committee.

“Folks need certainty and it makes their life easier if we don’t do an extension of the bill which we’ve had to do in the past. So his goal is, let’s get a bill done that kind of works for Ohio agriculture and other members of the committee. Let’s get this done by September,” McCracken said.

He called the Agriculture Committee as one of the most bipartisan committees in the U.S. Senate with the policy debates being more about regional differences than political party.

With the bill presently working its way through the committee process improvements have been discussed to the dairy program.

“One of the issues that had potentially been holding this up is some problems in the dairy program and the cotton program. But we’ve made a down payment on fixing them about two or three weeks ago in the big budget deal you probably read about,” McCracken said.

He said there’s potential that issues with the dairy and cotton programs could have held the Farm Bill up, however a compromise was reached in the recent budget deal in order to address some of those problems.

“A program we designed in 2014 didn’t work the way we’d hoped it would. So we’ve fixed it we hope and made a number of improvements there. Because we’ve fixed that we think that on both the dairy side and the cotton side, that probably actually makes it probably more likely that we can do a Farm Bill this year because those are expensive issues to deal with and somewhat controversial,” McCracken said.